bloodyrosemccoy: (Xenofairies)
What I Learned Since The Winter Solstice

  • The Cooking Hypothesis suggests that the invention of cooking precipitated a rapid evolutionary change in humans, allowing them to more efficiently process nutrients and, of course, growing bigger brains. I always said cooking was an important part of humanity, dangit!

  • Nancy Kerrigan was filmed right after being attacked sobbing and asking "Why? Why?"--and a lot of people thought she was being a wimp or a drama queen because she was only bruised. Dude, it still hurts, but quite apart from that, when you get attacked, it's probably TERRIFYING and it HURTS YOUR FEELINGS.

  • The difference between triple axels, triple spins, triple lutzes, etc., has to do with where you push off from and what direction you're facing and okay fine I've already forgotten.

  • Flavoring sodas is a lot like brewing tea. Really sugary tea.

  • But brown sugar makes them taste rather bitter.

  • Also, soda-brewing is similar to making beer, except you don't let the yeast go far enough to make alcohol.

  • Furthermore, there is a lot of argument over just what the "cream" in "cream soda" refers to. Vanilla? Adding cream to the soda? Or cream of tartar? It's a HISTORY MYSTERY.

  • In tangentially-related soda discoveries, SodaStream is a company fraught with political tensions and controversy.

  • Cloth pads and panty liners are surprisingly expensive, but also surprisingly worth it.

  • There is a constellation in the Southern Hemisphere called "The Poop." Yes, it refers to a ship's stern (poop deck), BUT STILL. HURRRR.

  • There are, naturally, all sorts of recipes for Ent-Draught on the internet.

  • Mainlining Atop The Fourth Wall has taught me something I always rather thought: I have terrible comic-reading comprehension. I do okay with some, mostly in comic strip form, but it takes me a long time to parse each page, way longer than it takes to read straight prose, so if I'm going to read a comic, I have to be committed. And even then I have trouble regarding them critically.*

  • I did learn, however, that lots of people find it extremely difficult to keep comic continuity straight. Comic writers, for instance. Case in point: Donna Troy.

  • The director of Tremors is Ron Underwood, who got his start in the film industry making educational shorts for Barr Films--such as one of my favorite Rifftrax-featured shorts, Library World.

  • My mom, who watched very little TV as a kid, nevertheless has strong opinions about what Mr. Peabody's voice sounds like.

  • Mork & Mindy was a spinoff of Happy Days.  Clearly, I never watched either of them.

  • Getting feedback on your novel can be a mixed bag. You get excited that you can make it better, but frustrated when you can't tell if the feedback makes sense.

  • Publishing a serial story online gets more difficult with each installment because there's a lot to keep track of. BUT DAMMIT IT'S STILL POSSIBLE.

  • You can unclog standard drain clogs with the use of science fair volcano technology.

  • After you turn into the left-turn-lane, it's legal to drive 500 freaking feet in that lane. Which is almost a whole block even here in Salt Lake City.

  • The Beautiful Creatures movie might be adapted from a novel of the same name, but don't let that fool you. It is clearly a remake of The Touch of Satan.

  • The first female-directed movie ever to gross more than $1 billion is Frozen. Which is awesome, but dang, it took a while to get there. Let's hope this is a good precedent!



*Interestingly, though, I read a lot of Archie comics as a kid. It fascinated me the same way 1950s Educational Shorts fascinate me--it shows some weird whitebread cultural ideal that somehow I can't look away from.
bloodyrosemccoy: (Stand Back)
It can be frustrating to have to wait to get an agent and then get editors and publishers and things. But the good news is that the intervening time gives you a chance to have BRILLIANT IDEAS about how to fix some of the problems in your manuscript.

Oh, yeah. Today's a good day.
bloodyrosemccoy: (Science!)
I have managed to make a cream soda that tastes exactly like drinking a fizzy cinnamon bun.

... I will try to use this newfound power only for good, but realistically I can make no promises.
bloodyrosemccoy: A cartoon bottle of purple potion (Potionmaster)
So the current homemade soda scores are as follows:

Extracts

1 flatass root beer
1 fairly passable ginger ale
1 delicious cream soda

Scratch

1 awesome ginger ale with lemon
1 flatass root beer
1 attempt at root beer with vanilla and brown sugar in which I seem to have accidentally made ACTUAL beer instead
1 birch beer attempt that somehow became Ent-draught NO SERIOUSLY HOW DID I DO THAT*
1 pretty darn good three-root root beer that tastes very licorice-y

I think the brown sugar is out. The two I made with it--the birch beer and the root beer--are kind of bitter. White sugar seems to make it more soda-ish. I'm gonna try another straight root beer now that I've gotten the hang of actual carbonation, and try the birch beer again with white sugar and a lot less birch.

I also want to try cream soda from scratch, but I have to get hold of some cream of tartar first. And I'm starting to think about figuring out my own recipes. I'm thinking I could do a lot with tea blends, because OF COURSE I AM. Come on, though--how can you not agree that an Earl Grey Cream Soda could be completely awesome if I figured out how to do it right?

And even if I never figure that out, it's nice to know that those frosted soda mugs we've kept in the freezer for years are finally earning their keep.


Bonus Points: Was willing to bet my pants there was an actual Ent-draught recipe on Google. There are about 2.36 million reasons why I get to keep my pants.



*The weirdest part is that I've drunk several bottles and still can't tell if I like it. "This is too beery," I think. "But it's also refreshing. But the aftertaste is bitter. But it's also kind of got some mentholish flavor that's rather intriguing. But maybe it'll resolve if I take another sip." And over it all is "This tastes like I'm drinking a goddamn FOREST."
bloodyrosemccoy: (Lobot!)
So they've found that there's water in Martian soil, but that it'll take some processing to actually get to it. Well, that'll be handy once we get up there and start to HOLY SHIT WAIT A SECOND.

MOISTURE FARMERS. The water is eventually going to have to be extracted by MOISTURE FARMERS.

That's right. We are one step closer to living in a Star Wars universe.

God DAMN, science is good.

Ahem

Jul. 20th, 2013 04:31 pm
bloodyrosemccoy: Calvin and Hobbes looking at the moon with binoculars (Moongazing)
This is your yearly reminder that HOLY SHIT WE HAVE BEEN TO THE MOON.

That is all.
bloodyrosemccoy: (Venus By Air)
The Basics: They went looking for stuff. And then they were surprised when they found it.

You Are About To Read A Comment About Framing Devices. Here It Comes: Europa Report runs into another trap in the mockumentary genre I claim to like so much: over-framing. The movie feels like a really long first act, with a lot of inexplicably nonlinear storytelling, crazily over-edited camera shots, and redundant narration. You know, that voiceover giving you really USEFUL information. "You're about to see a bunch of footage from the Europa mission. Here it is now. The footage, I mean. So this is the footage we were watching, too. And now you're watching it. About a trip. To Europa."

Even the exciting climax, in which that one thing happens, ) is immediately dulled by their ground crew PR lady helpfully summarizing what we just saw.

It would be like the buildup in the original Alien being twice as long, and then John Hurt decides to stick his face in a giant alien egg, and the facehugger springs out and gets all violatey and then--we cut to some Weyland or Yutani telling the camera, "In that fateful moment, John Hurt totally stuck his face in an alien egg zone, and then a big ugly thing jumped out and attached itself to his helmet. Boy, that sure scared us when we watched the footage! Anyway, movie's over." And then the credits roll, leaving you wondering where the rest of the story went. It was disappointing, is what I'm saying.

Robot Roll Call: It felt rather like one of any dozen 50's sci-fi B-movies featured on MST3k. Right down to the international crew's roll call. That made me laugh.

A Thing I Liked: The science was cool, though. I especially liked that the characters never turned into the hysterical idiots you usually find in these movies. They were Doing Science, dangit, and they were professionals. So refreshing.

Another Thing I Liked: There's a part when another thing happens. ) That was pretty excellent. But then nobody mentions it again and it doesn't really build from there, and that is disappointing.

An Actor I Liked: It's good to see the Ice Truck Killer getting work. (An ENTIRE PLANET of ice! IT IS LIKE HEAVEN!) He has a really interesting face.

Overall: I was hoping for more.

ALSO: Not even Mind-Blowing Genre-Defying Indie Movies are immune from basic movie rules. Never show anyone a photo of your loved ones back home. Unless you're feeling suicidal.
bloodyrosemccoy: (Xenofairies)
What I Learned Since the Spring Equinox:

  • There are a number of strategies being suggested for towing asteroids away from Earth. I can't decide if my favorite is gravity snare, where you send up something that has enough mass to tow the asteroid with gravity, or big Space Lasso.

  • The Good Samaritan who helps Dairine in High Wizardry is, in fact, supposed to be the Fifth Doctor.

  • The term for when someone blanks out and appears to be conscious but unresponsive to the people around them is dissociative stupor.

  • Museums are really concerned with pest control. Which makes sense, but I had never thought about it before.

  • When you post a job listing, it's probably better to figure out what you want the prospective employee or intern to do before putting it up.

  • Since the Iranian Revolution, there has been a ridiculously high spike in multiple sclerosis among Iranian women. This is likely due to a lack of vitamin D caused by wearing sun-blocking burqas all the damn time. Talk about unintended consequences.

  • There is catnip in our garden.

  • The symbolic food of a Passover seder is not intended to be the main Passover meal. Which is good, because I also learned what food is acceptable for the Passover plate, and it hardly makes a good meal anyway.

  • Nobody ever remembers that the T-rex in Jurassic Park is female, even though it is explicitly pointed out.

  • Deep-frying is actually fairly easy; it's the battering/coating that is annoying.

  • Although it is made slightly less so with the use of chopsticks.

  • You're supposed to replace thyme plants every 3-4 years lest they get all woody. I don't know, I'm so impressed that my thyme has lasted this long that I'd feel kinda bad replacing it.

  • The Europeans call moose "elks." I have no idea what they call elks. Europeans are so confused.

  • "These aren't the droids we're looking for." - Launchpad McQuack, apparently

  • Water can deflect bullets! Mostly because they tend to shatter on impact, which is kind of awesome.

  • Sealed soda bottle with a little dry ice + water = EXPLODE

  • The butterfly that employs mimicking the monarch is called the viceroy. They used to think the viceroy was mimicking the more poisonous monarch, but evidently the viceroy's got some poison in it, too.

  • Butterfly namers have a thing for bureaucratic hierarchy, what with all the queens and viceroys and admirals and soldiers and emperors and whatnot. I swear at this point I would not be surprised to find that there is a Minister Of Agriculture and Transportation Butterfly.

  • Unlike almost every other video game, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link did not prove itself to be easier now that I'm well past kindergarten.

bloodyrosemccoy: (Planets)
So Discovery aired a kind of sequel to Mermaids: The Body Found last week, and just like when the first one came out last year, and with that dragon one some years back, it raises an important and intriguing question:

Dude, am I the only one who thought it was just a really fun sci-fi mockumentary?

The only opinions I've really seen are "OMG I'M CONVINCED MERMAIDS R TOTALLY REAL AND THE GOVERNMENT IS COVERING IT UP" and "TRICKERY! This is naught but a HOAX you fools! It is trashy TV to ensnare unwary minds!" It's like for this particular series people forget that speculative fiction is a thing. Admittedly the documentary format is more prone to being misunderstood than your standard SyFy Original or blockbuster,* but c'mon. They are not trying to tell us The Truth, or to confuse the masses with falsehood. They are being creative and playing with science and story.

Anyway, I was kind of disappointed with the follow-up. I really liked the first one--I'm a total sucker for grain-of-science mockumentaries like that. And given that my school biology notes were covered with speculative attempts to design biologically viable, evolutionarily plausible mammalian mermaids (who are going to show up in OGYAFE 2: Electric Boogaloo), or fungal Mushroom People (y'know, the Super Mario ones), or plant-based fairies (like, say, Terwu'arie from Scatterstone), I would say that shouldn't be a surprise. I love making up critters. Hell, the game Spore was just an extension of what I've been doing all along. Only I do it more thoroughly.

But I am also a sucker for speculative anthropology.** So while the ~*~mysteeeerious mystery*~* of cryptozoology was fun, and I do rather enjoy creepy "found" footage, I would have preferred more of a staight-up metafictional study of their evolution and culture. As long as this IS fiction, I do wish they'd carry the story further. Public discovery, contact, language, all that shit that people think doesn't work as entertainment--I would watch the HELL out of that. ("Since making contact with the merfolk, Dr. Dirk Squarejaw has been living on his boat in the open ocean, studying their lifestyle. He filmed the whole thing. Here are some of the highlights." I WOULD WATCH THAT. I might even skip watching 7 Or 8 Assholes And Mister Rogers, if the two shows were in the same time slot. God, TV is so much cooler in my head.)

... Actually, come to think of it, that was pretty much my wish for Avatar, too. But you knew that.


RANDOM POINTLESS COMPLAINT: It kind of annoys me that they kept referring to the entire species as "mermaids." I hereby propose we come up with a good sex-unspecific term for merpeople that isn't as cumbersome as, y'know, "merpeople."


*Their big mistake was tossing in the Government Coverup. If you're a conspiracy theorist, any debunking of that is only further proof that the debunker is PART OF THE CONSPIRACY. There is no way to argue with the claim that "they had to present it as fiction because otherwise the government/Illuminati/lizard people would have completely crushed it."

**Or anthropoidology, I guess.
bloodyrosemccoy: (Science!)
Who wants science videos?



Everything is cooler in space! EVEN WASHCLOTHS.

Yeah, you've probably seen this already.

Galaxy crash!



Breakdancing cornstarch!



And this guy, who isn't really science, but he deserves more recognition for saying "big gay rainbow across my electorate."



Thank you, that is all.
bloodyrosemccoy: (Xenofairies)
What I Learned Since The Winter Solstice

  • Dyslexia can cause difficulty in word retrieval in speech as well as in writing.

  • The original edition of The Hobbit mentioned policemen. For some reason, I find this far weirder than the business I already knew about the Riddles in the Dark scene being so much less awesome at first.

  • Lisa Frank is still around, but she's gotten rather weird.

  • Retired AG items are on eBay for reasonable prices, and apparently inside I am still ten years old and WANTING them.

  • Yuri Gagarin's flight into space was even more awesome than I thought, because it turns out his reentry strategy was basically to jump back to Earth.

  • Fi, from Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, apparently does have real arms under her wings/cape.

  • Netting requires its own special knots.

  • The history of matches is long and crazy, and features poison, disintegrating jaws, and explosions. Which is kind of awesome.

  • I don't have astigmatism; I just have myopia. This means I do not have football-shaped eyeballs; they are simply oblate spheroids.

  • It is possible to get completely absorbed just classifying the hell out of images of distant galaxies. For SCIENCE!

  • Snow can smash up your roof pretty impressively.

  • You can totally make yourself a fluffernutter on the International Space Station.

  • Prescription sunglasses are the bomb.

  • MRI chambers act as Faraday cages to keep out external radio forces.

  • Speaking of MRIs, apparently dybbuks show up on them.

  • Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is the most adorable plushie ever made.

  • The term for delicious potato chips and cream puffs and other such things is "supernormal releaser," which is a fancy way of saying "too much of a good thing," since back in Ye Olden Times it was really difficult to come across fat and salt and sugar, so your body is still convinced it should stuff them into your face whenever you come across them. That I knew, but I didn't know the term for them.

  • Writing on a deadline, even a self-imposed one, is rough.

  • Horror movies in theaters are a very different experience from horror movies alone in your room in the dark.

  • Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major is an impressive bit of music to watch being performed.*

  • Cats and toy trains are natural enemies.

  • My confusion regarding a certain specific idiom in Irish accents is a direct result of David Eddings' confusion regarding the same.  When I learned that the phrase "I'm after [verb]ing" meant "I've just been [verb]ing," I thought for some reason it was counter-intuitive--it seemed like it should mean "I'm gonna [verb]"--but I didn't know why.  It's only after rereading The Belgariad and Malloreon that I realized that it's because Eddings uses the expression in his "Wacite brogue" accent, where it does mean "I'm gonna [verb]."  I picked up that meaning in junior high and it stuck with me after I'd forgotten the source.**

  • In Tolkien's mythos, Fëanor was the one who came up with the Tengwar. Yet another addition to the list of atrocities he perpetrated on the Firstborn of Ilúvatar.

  • Popes can retire.

  • Mister Rogers answered every single letter he got. Which is a gargantuan task, because by god he was MISTER ROGERS.



*I've always rather wanted to see that one. It gets mentioned on an episode of M*A*S*H and I was always intrigued by the idea of writing a concerto for someone who had lost their right hand. So when my friend invited me to the symphony, I was not disappointed when they changed the program due to the pianist's having an injury on his right hand because hey, that meant I finally got to hear the left-handed piece.

**Even back then I knew that Eddings had some fanciful ideas about linguistics, but I did not notice that one specifically.
bloodyrosemccoy: (Science!)
Since it's warm enough that the snow is pretty much sublimating directly into vapor, I went out to assess the newly-visible garden today and found that, to my everlasting amazement, the thyme, the strawberry, and the parsley are all still alive!

Oh, I knew intellectually that snow is an insulator, but it's one thing to know something and another to see it. It was a record-breakingly freezing winter this year, and when you stepped outside it felt like nothing could survive out there.* And since snow is cold and wet, I remain skeptical about its ability to keep anything warm no matter HOW many times I go through the science.

But once again, Science shows me what's what. Gardening: teaching you practical Science since the dawn of horticulture.


*Not Californians, that's for sure.
bloodyrosemccoy: (WOO SCIENCE)
Woo Darwin Day!

Have some David Attenborough.

bloodyrosemccoy: (WOO SCIENCE)
By the way, anybody want a tour of the International Space Station? Because here's one now! I missed this when it first came out, but it's worth a watch.



I love watching the astronauts just casually floating around in freefall like it's the only way they've ever moved. Must be weird to have to get used to gravity again when they get home. And it must be REALLY strange to get used to not lying down when you sleep upon first arrival there. I wonder how long it takes to convince your body that it's okay to fall asleep.

Also, I would love to visit the ISS except for that constant background noise. I have enough trouble with airplanes, for crying out loud. I would go crazy in under 3 minutes having to listen to that.
bloodyrosemccoy: (Planets)
That's a lot of planets.

I'm starting to wonder if we might actually find alien life while I'm still around to witness it. Sure, we probably won't GET to it, but then I never really thought we'd be spotting planets at this point, anyway. It would be amazing to check out some other lifeforms even if they're just little one-celled wonders, but I'd be pleased just to know for sure that it's out there. It seems statistically absurd that at least ONE other planet wouldn't have something growin' on it.

Hey, I can dream.
bloodyrosemccoy: (Default)
What I Learned Since The Summer Solstice
  • Neil Armstrong was, in fact, mortal.
  • Whorf was half-right on his hypothesis that language affects perception. It seems that once you have a word for a color, you can recognize it faster because the left hemisphere of your brain takes over the perception duties.
  • Leafminers are gross little bugs whose larvae like to live in bubbles on spinach, chard, and beet leaves. Bastards.
  • Nail polish is good if you want to make your arts'n'crafts project look shiny and enameled. And if you can stand the smell.
  • Malaria is believed to be responsible for the death of HALF OF ALL HUMANS since the Stone Age. NOT ME, THOUGH, SUCKA!
  • The name "Starbuck," which I have always liked for the sound, is an English surname most likely deriving from a Norse phrase for "from the great river."
  • Sometimes the supposed Great Unwashed Masses can be persuaded with actual facts and math!
  • Those swinging orange things on Yoshi's sprite in Super Mario World, which I always thought were stirrups or decorations for his saddle, are his ARMS. I can't unsee them now.
  • Those SOS buttons for old or at-risk people living alone are only useful if they actually HAVE them when they fall and can't get up.
  • Tress MacNeille did the voice of Chip in Chip an' Dale: Rescue Rangers. I always thought he was done by Russi Taylor.
  • Radish seeds come in nifty little pods!
  • According to a statement released by the Mormon Church, Mormons are TOTALLY allowed to drink caffeinated products like Coke and Mountain Dew. The real ban is against "hot drinks" like tea and coffee, but not hot cocoa, which is totally cool for some reason. Thanks for clearing that up, church!
  • Tiny laptops are extraordinarily useful to be able to carry around.
  • Ron Perlman continues to forge new frontiers in awesome.
  • The best way to fix Doctors! is to pretty much rewrite it.
  • Jeans shopping is still my enemy.
  • Statistics show that group projects lower productivity pretty much across the board, even with those extroverts who seem to like them so much.
  • Jumpsuits are not that difficult to sew, though practice is called for to get particularly good.
  • When hooking up a new plastic toilet pump, it is perfectly okay to use one of the previous metal nuts to secure it, as long as you make sure there is no leakage.
  • Apparently I've been growing feverfew in my garden and had no idea.
  • Honor Harrington is THE SHIT.
  • I still have a chestburster. Bring me more purple stuff!
bloodyrosemccoy: Calvin and Hobbes looking at the moon with binoculars (Moongazing)
So the Neil Armstrong display we had at work is already down, leaving behind a rather hollow feeling.

At first I was a little surprised: I didn't think I'd be quite so broken up about his death.* But the moment I got the news, it brought home, in ways that XKCD chart could not, that at this point the most astounding thing we've ever done is something in the past. Neil didn't open a floodgate. It was just a blip.

On the one hand, I'm perversely glad--he lived his whole life as a unique, mind-boggling explorer. Moonwalkers aren't exactly commonplace, so he kept a distinction in life and death that we might not have perceived had we continued traveling there and established permanent bases or an amusement park WITH BLACKJACK! AND HOOKERS! or something.**

But on the other hand, I really hope his death does for others what it did for me--reminds us that if we don't do something soon, we are going to run out of people who can remember standing on ANOTHER FUCKING PLANET. And we need people who know, in the way only experience can teach you, that IT CAN BE DONE. I don't want to lose that certainty. I don't want to have to start over.

So I toast you: Neil and the other three vanished Moon Men, and another toast to the eight we still have. You guys know it's possible. Keep reminding us.


*Possibly because I wasn't entiredly convinced he could die. The other Apollo dudes were, y'know, dudes, but I've been under the subconscious impression that the Apollo 11 guys were selected because they were indestructible.

**Of course, even now some of his distinction has waned rather patheticlally. I went to work on August 25th and kept telling people "Neil Armstrong died!" and everyone under 40 replied with "Aww, after all this steroid scandal, too!"
bloodyrosemccoy: (Loltrek)
MY SISTER while watching the Curiosity landing: The guy in the red over there is feeling stupid because he forgot it was Blue Shirt Day at NASA. "Oh, wait, that was TODAY?!"

MOM: Nah, he's just the expendable guy. They always have one in case anything goes wrong.


... Yeah, so we've corrupted Mom. I kinda like it.
bloodyrosemccoy: (WOO SCIENCE)
Before the day is over, I just want to remind everyone that on a July 20th, this happened:



We should do that again sometime!

As awesome badass Neil deGrasse Tyson said, "July 20, 1969 -- "Men Walk On Moon" -- The only positive event in the last 50 years for which everyone remembers where they were when it happened."

(Although The Onion's comment had a certain ring to it, too.)

Physics!

Jul. 5th, 2012 02:32 am
bloodyrosemccoy: (WOO SCIENCE)
Hey, awesome! They found that darn Higgs boson!

Looks like Stephen Hawking is out a hundred bucks. I don't think he minds too much, though.

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